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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452057">Melusine Among the Tombs</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose'>DesdemonaKaylose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunter X Hunter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Action/Adventure, Aged-Up Gon Freecs, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, Eventual Romance, Fairy Tale Elements, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:35:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26452057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Traveling with a train of wagons towards the capital of the Seaside Empire, Gon and his friends find themselves with no choice but to ask the hospitality of something that lives deep within the woods, in the ancient graves of a ruined land. Who <em>is</em> Hisoka, and why is everything about him peculiarly off from what a dragon ought to be?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gon Freecs/Hisoka, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>71</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Wyrmabod</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic contains somewhat aged-up Hisogon which nonetheless may still be upsetting to some readers. In fine fairy tale tradition, I'm not going to set anything very sexual before the protagonist is sixteen, but then I'm off the leash. If this isn't what you're into, please put your own mental health first and turn back. Here there be dragons. </p><p>I have no idea what I'm doing with this, but it's been in the back of my mind for probably three years, so I'm giving it a chance to stretch its legs. To everyone who wanted me to get back into hxh... well, here goes nothing!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Treasure, as exotic and rare as any known to mankind: enchanted chalices, precious gems, nutmeg and spices in canisters untouched by time, silks and brocades, the thrones of long lost dynasties. These were the provinces of dragons, supernatural beings of immense power, shapeshifters and enchanters. Very little was known about the nature of these fearsome beasts, at least among mankind—where did they come from? Where did they go to? Why did treasure so enchant them, and why were they so very difficult to part from it? While wars rage over their mountains and the hills below, age after age, dragons remain aloof from the affairs of men, a panic and plague to whatever land their shadow fell across.</p><p>Gon was fourteen years old when he encountered his first dragon.</p><p>He had left his home island in the eastern sea and arrived on the mainland just in time to catch a ride on a caravan headed west, towards the capital of the Seaside Empire. The last letter his aunt had received from his father was marked with the seal of the Capital, sent almost twelve years before, and attached to a dagger that Mito Freecs had presented Gon with, reluctantly, on his fourteenth birthday.</p><p>“So what did the letter say?” Kurapika had asked him, as they sat around the campfire that first night with the caravan. The tinkers and nomads were safely tucked away in their wagon homes, but as for the rest of the travelers and pilgrims, the night had proved a trial. The weather had been rough, and it was only the three of them together who had been able to devise a satisfactory shelter from the sleet and wind, where the fire could burn with any success. </p><p>“Well…” Gon had shrugged with some embarrassment. “It said I should take the dagger for an inheritance and not chase after him, since he’s as good as dead to me now that he left me behind for someone else to raise.”</p><p>Kurapika’s eyebrows went up. “And yet here you are, chasing after him.”</p><p>Gon wrinkled his nose. “I just don’t think it’s a very good trade! I’m going to find him, and give him the dagger back, and make him show me how to be a treasure hunter like he is. And <em>then</em> it’ll be fair.”</p><p>“Suppose he doesn’t want to teach you?” Kurapika asked.</p><p>“He will,” Gon said, with perfect confidence. “I’m his son! When he sees how serious I am, he’ll have to do it.”</p><p>On Kurapika’s right, Leorio was slumped back against a stump and examining the dagger in question, holding it up against the firelight. “Sure doesn’t <em>seem</em> like anything special,” he remarked. “Maybe it’s just some junk he picked up. Maybe he isn’t even a real treasure hunter.”</p><p>“He is!” Gon said. “Everyone says he was an amazing treasure hunter, even before he left! He killed a dragon when he was only fifteen years old! That’s amazing, isn’t it?”</p><p>Since that first night, on the coast, their caravan had come many days travel deeper into the mainland. It passed through the swamplands, through a great rushing river that had carried away a dozen less cautious of their fellow travelers, and was passing now through the Ruined Lands, a wilderness spotted at every turn with the wreckage of some ancient stone empire.</p><p>About a day’s journey into the Ruined Lands, the cottonwoods and willows and birds gave way to a standing stone circle straight in the middle of their path.</p><p>“At this point,” the head of the caravan—a seasoned merchant from the north—announced to the group at large, “we’ll have to go around! It’s bad luck to travel through the circle, and the road ahead is rife with all kinds of danger. They say a dragon lives inside one of the burial mounds that way, and the last thing we want is to be noticed by a dragon.”</p><p>There was a ragged shout of boos from the crowd. With their many pack animals and unwieldy wooden cartwheels, none of the travelers relished the idea of lugging their possessions through the narrow foot trails and underbrush of the forest.  While they were embroiled in argument with the head of the caravan, Gon and his friends hung back from the mess and surveyed the hill with the  standing circle with some interest.</p><p>“I suppose the road must lead through it for a reason,” Kurapika said, considering the deeply worn ruts in the turf at his foot. “Maybe there was originally a pilgrimage that ran this way.”</p><p>“Pretty impressive it’s still standing,” Leorio said. “But I’m more interested in those burial mounds he mentioned. I wonder if they’ve already been looted, or if there’s still any treasure left in there.”</p><p>“Did you miss the part where he mentioned a dragon?” Kurapika asked dryly. “Or can’t you hear anything past the sound of coins jingling?”</p><p>While Leorio scoffed, Gon scaled the side of a vardo wagon. From its curved wooden roof, he was able to see past the circle and into the countryside ahead, where the heather gave way to woods again.</p><p>There was sudden shouting and banging from the other side of the wagon, and Gon slid across the roof just in time to see a trio of brothers shove the caravan head down onto the turf.</p><p>“Listen here,” one of them said, while the other two bore down on the more experienced traveler, “we’ve got an appointment to make in the capital, and we’re not about to lose a day mucking around in the shrubs with all these donkeys and chicken coops. You’re gonna take us through the straightway, and you’re gonna do it <em>now.</em>”</p><p>Gon climbed to his feet. “Hey!” he shouted down. “Leave him alone, he’s just doing his job!”</p><p>In a moment, Kurapika and Leorio had rushed around the side of the vardo to see what the fuss was about. When they came clear, Leorio stiffened; Kurapika reached for his bokken. Immediately a handful of random travelers reached for their own weapons, short swords and hooks and hammers, and closed ranks around the belligerent trio.</p><p>“Everyone, please,” the caravan head said, one elbow planted in the dirt. He lifted the other hand in a plea for peace. “A caravan should never quarrel within itself. We are all that we have out here in this wilderness.”</p><p>The skinnier one of the brothers planted his boot in the man’s back and ground down. “Fine by us, we don’t want a fight. We just wanna get going. You gonna do the smart thing, old man?”</p><p>There was a tightness in the air, as Leorio and Kurapika both drew themselves down into a coiled stance, ready to spring. The share of travelers who had sided with the brothers, more than a third of the whole group, also tensed.</p><p>“Yes,” the headman said, at last, “fine, we will go on with the straightway. If that’s what the group wants, that’s what we’ll do. Let me up.”</p><p>The tension remained, as the trio let the headman up and the man brushed himself off. Gon jumped down between Kurapika and Leorio, who were putting away their own weapons with some reluctance.</p><p>“That isn’t right,” Gon said. “He’s the most experienced traveler, if he says the road is dangerous, we should be listening to him.”</p><p>“I agree,” Kurapika said. “All the same, there’s strength in numbers. I would be hesitant to break off from the caravan, even if I knew the way to the capital perfectly myself.”</p><p>“We’re at the mercy of the whole stupid mob of ‘em,” Leorio agreed, his eyes narrowing.</p><p>And it was on that grim note that they set off again, amongst the rolling coops and covered wagons, and passed beneath the wide stone lintel of the standing circle.</p><p>Kurapika, as he had eventually revealed some several nights into the trip, was on his way to the capital to become an enforcer; that was to say, a warrant officer, a hound of the empire. Leorio was traveling to find a doctor willing to teach him medicine, and hopefully apprentice himself to the craft. Neither could afford to delay their travel another season, even if the caravan they found themselves attached to was in conflict with their own principles.</p><p>In the woods deep beyond the standing circle, beneath the canopy of seasonless beeches, Gon paused mid-step and turned his head north.</p><p>“What?” Leorio said, bending down. “You hear something?”</p><p>“What could he possibly hear over this racket,” Kurapika murmured, as the coop of squawking chickens rolled along behind him.</p><p>Gon shook his head. “I smell…” He frowned. “I smell sweat. And old blood.”</p><p>Leorio and Kurapika met each other’s worried gazes at the same time. “Let’s get the headman,” Kurapika said, just as the first arrow flew out of the treeline and embedded itself in the post of the chicken coop.</p><p>In the same moment, the three of them grabbed hands and threw themselves through the gap in the train of wagons, taking shelter behind the sturdy wall of the next vardo as a hail of arrows punched into the whole north facing side of the wagon train.</p><p>“Bandits!” Kurapika shouted, his voice almost lost in the eruption of chaos.</p><p>“We need to get out of the open,” Leorio said. The checkered brocade of his carpet bag swung as he gestured to the southern treeline. “We’re sitting ducks out here!”</p><p>“The headman,” Gon said, suddenly. “We have to get him.”</p><p>“Gon, we don’t have—” Kurapika looked down just soon enough to realize Gon was no longer there, “—time. Oh.”</p><p>He looked at Leorio. Leorio let out a sharp breath and then straightened up. “Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t feel right leaving the guy either. He tried to warn us.”</p><p>“Yes,” Kurapika said, turning to the front end of the caravan. “Yes, I suppose so.”</p><p>The whooping, mounted shapes of bandits were pouring now out of the woods—probably not more than a dozen, but in their staggered chaos they had the feeling of being an endless flood to the unprepared travelers. It was pandemonium as Gon and his friends raced to reach the headman; animals in disarray, humans shouting and scrambling for control of them. A mule tore free of his lead-line and broke for the southern woods, scattering wax-wrapped packets across the ground as he went.</p><p>They found the headman slumped and clutching an arrow embedded in his upper arm, blood blooming through his blue wool sleeve. He looked up as Gon reached him, confusion and pain in a mixture across his features.</p><p>“Let us help you, sir,” Gon said, and braced the man so that he could get to his feet again.</p><p>“Do you know anything about these bandits?” Kurapika asked. “How they operate?”</p><p>“I don’t know this troupe,” the headman told them, his voice tight. “I don’t know if they kill travelers or leave them alive.”</p><p>“Well let’s not stick around to find out,” Leorio said, and swung his carpetbag against his back.</p><p>Kurapika hooked the headman’s uninjured arm over his own shoulder and then they were off, darting across the ditch and over the shoulder of the road. There was a shout from somewhere behind them; a twang, and the dire whistle of fletching passing through air. Kurapika was caught with dread at the sound—what could he do but keep going, even with the weight of the headman dragging him down? They had rescued the man, it would be the height of dishonor to abandon him now.</p><p>The whistle broke suddenly into a gruesome <em>thock</em> as it hit human flesh, but it was neither Kurapika nor the headman who cried out. Leorio let out a pained grunt, from much closer behind Kurapika than he had been before. There was a scuffing against the ground as he, presumably, staggered.</p><p>They hit the treeline. Another arrow embedded itself in the trunk as they raced past, and then they were safe among the old growth of the forest, beyond the reach of arrows. Kurapika could finally turn his head and see what had become of Leorio.</p><p>White faced, grimacing, Leorio was only a few steps behind. At first there was no sign of the arrow, but then it dawned on Kurapika that the shaft of the arrow had passed through the carpetbag over Leorio’s shoulder and buried itself in his shoulder blade.</p><p>“Oh,” Kurapika said. “You’re…”</p><p>Leorio’s grimace twisted into a pale echo of a smile. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “It’s not that deep. Better me than you guys, anyway.”</p><p>“Leorio…” Kurapika said.</p><p>Gon appeared at his elbow, making a thoughtful circle around Leorio's back. “We need to get that loose. Normally it’s better to leave them in until you can patch it, but the shaft is pinning your bag to your back, and you won’t be able to let go of the handle or the weight will snap it off inside you.”</p><p>“We can’t do it yet, not out here,” Leorio retorted. “Who knows if they’ll send someone after us. We need shelter, somewhere defensible.”</p><p>Gon tapped his boot a couple times, and then he said, “I’ll scout ahead, I’m faster and uninjured. You guys just keep moving south, and I’ll find you again once I’ve scouted a place.”</p><p>“Very well,” Kurapika said. “Go on ahead. I’m sure with your experience you can find something suitable for all of us.”</p><p>“You sure, Kurapika?” Leorio asked. “That just leaves the two of us.”</p><p>Kurapika smiled at him, just past the bend of the headman’s elbow. “I think we’ll do just fine together.”</p><p>Leorio went red. Kurapika started moving forward again, leaving him where he stood.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gon ranged deep and wide into the wilderness, searching for something that could be made safe for travelers to hide out in. This was the wrong kind of geology for caves, he knew—not mountainous enough—or for caverns—not hilly and soft enough. But the ruins, he thought, could be useful. He had gone just far enough that the nature of trees had begun to shift from heavy beeches to wilder, more twisted shapes.</p><p>There was wild jasmine growing here, climbing the broken stone of some unknowable ancient structure. Gon scaled the sharp upward jut of one broken stone and caught a glimpse of something earthy through the branches ahead. Curious, he darted ahead, and escaped the underbrush only to find himself at the base of an earth mound, its sides shaped in an irregular pyramid, angles softened to nothing by age. Green grass grew up its sides and across its worn peak. And yet the door, a black arch in the front of it, remained clean and clear of rubble or trailing vines.</p><p>Gon took one step towards it. And then another. And then he took off, boots beating the ragged pavement. The arch swallowed him, and for a moment he was entirely in the dark.</p><p>A lantern burst to life. Its blue flame illuminated a series of steps down into a darkness that flickered with pinprick reflections of firelight. The steps bore him down into a chamber that stretched out beneath the earth, and its high ceiling was the arch of the grave mound.  The floor was polished black and white marble, their interlocking diamonds almost as perfect now as the day they must have been laid. Gon stepped into the darkness, and another lantern popped to life high above him, illuminating a space that seemed almost like a flowerless garden, buried beneath the earth.</p><p>The shadow at the far end of the chamber rippled with a slow lazy shifting of weight, and then one gleaming yellow eye opened.</p><p>“Hmm?” its voice purred. It lifted its head, the nostrils of its snakelike head flaring with interest. “How interesting. Who are you, I wonder, trodding my floors in your bright green boots, smelling of the sea….”</p><p>“I’m Gon Freecs,” said Gon. “It’s nice to meet you. Do you have a name?”</p><p>The lids of its glowing yellow eyes slid down to a lazy half-mast. Though the mouth was not mobile enough to change shape, there was something of amusement in the curve of eyelids.</p><p>“I have a name.”</p><p>“Okay,” Gon said. “Will you tell it to me?”</p><p>“Oh,” the dragon demurred, “surely you don’t care for the name of a creature like me, little dragon hunter?”</p><p>“I’m not a dragon hunter,” Gon said, “and I’d like to know your name, please, because it’s impolite to ask people favors before introducing yourselves.”</p><p>In a long, sinuous roll of scale and muscle, the dragon lifted itself to its claws. It had the pronounced haunches and narrow waist of a lizard, the deadly feather-shrouded claws of a raptor, scales like the frothy pink of semi-precious stones Gon had only ever seen in the jewelry of traveling fortune tellers. Its face was elegantly slanted back from a narrow muzzle.</p><p>It slithered closer to him, circling him with unblinking eyes. It was only maybe sixteen hands high, not much taller than a warhorse, but much longer, even before the tail. When the crested tip of that tail brushed Gon’s ankles, Gon held still. There was a hot breath on his shoulder. The tip of that narrow muzzle only just grazed the nape of his neck. A shiver ran down Gon's spine.</p><p>“It’s true that you aren’t heavily armed,” the dragon hummed, “but there are other ways of disposing of a dragon, aren’t there? Perhaps you are a virgin sacrifice, injected with a slow acting poison, meant for me to eat.”</p><p>“No,” Gon said. “I’m fine.”</p><p>The dragon drew back. The weight of the air behind Gon shifted—there was a smell like cinnamon, faint, and a hiss of rippling scales. The creature that circled back from around Gon was a man, or at least it resembled one—fair-skinned, broad-shouldered, with the same glittering yellow eyes.</p><p>It bent down to peer at him, a sharp-taloned finger tapping at its lips. “You wouldn’t like to try and seduce me, little hunter virgin? They say the belly of a dragon is its most vulnerable place. ”</p><p>Gon held his ground. “I think if that was true you probably wouldn’t tell me so,” he said.</p><p>“Mmm.”</p><p>“I’m not here to kill you,” Gon insisted.</p><p>“And yet,” the dragon said, “you carry a dragon hunter’s knife.”</p><p>Gon blinked. There was the flick of pale fingers, which curled closed, and opened again to reveal his father’s dagger.</p><p>“Hey!” Gon said. “That’s mine!”</p><p>“Mm,” the dragon said, “is it now?”</p><p>“I need that!” Gon said. With a step forward, he put out his palm demanding the knife back.  “I have to trade it to my father in the capital so he’ll teach me.”</p><p>“So it’s valuable to you?”</p><p>“It’s the only thing that he left me!”</p><p>Very delicately, the dragon lifted the dagger and examined it. Lantern light flashed along the blade.</p><p>“Your father certainly gave you an <em>interesting</em> inheritance,” it remarked. “A rare weapon, quite unusual.”</p><p>“Oh,” Gon said. “Is it magical?”</p><p>“This is cold steel. Which is to say, it’s almost <em>aggressively</em> unmagical. It will tear through magical flesh like teeth through a ripe peach.”</p><p>Gon considered this. “They say my old man killed a dragon when he was only a teenager.”</p><p>“Mm, probably with this,” the dragon agreed. “Which does raise the question… why on <em>earth</em> would I give this back to you? I don’t hold any particular attachment to the rest of my kind, but it would be remiss of me not to consider my own future.”</p><p>Gon frowned. “Couldn’t I just promise you I won’t use it to hurt you?”</p><p>“What good is a promise to me?”</p><p>The dragon turned Gon’s knife over again, thoughtfully, and then tossed it casually at Gon, who snatched it out of the air before he fully realized what had happened. The dragon turned, spinning on the arched heel of one boot, and flicked a hand in the air.</p><p>“My name is Hisoka,” it said, “a pleasure, I’m sure.”</p><p>On two legs, as graceful as a dancer, Hisoka crossed the room and sank into a carved stone seat. Elbow rested on armrest, cheek rested on knuckles. It was the only chair in the whole chamber, and parts of the stone looked like that’d been hacked away with an axe. Those piecing yellow eyes scanned the totality of Gon, but whatever they found there was beyond Gon’s guess.</p><p>The dragon crossed its long legs. “You said you had a favor to ask me?” The stripes of Hisoka’s pink stockings, visible up to the calf, resembled the segmented belly of a serpent.</p><p>Gon startled, and then straightened up. “Yes!” he said. “My friends and me were traveling with a caravan, but we were attacked. My friends need a safe place to tend their wounds. Could we please shelter here, for the night, in your house?”</p><p>Hisoka raised one sharp eyebrow. “You want hospitality? From me?”</p><p>“Yes,” Gon said, “please!”</p><p>Hisoka shifted to look at the far wall. “What to say… Perhaps I will tell you to bring them here, and then eat you all in one bite? I <em>do</em> eat people, occasionally.”</p><p>“Please don’t do that,” Gon said.</p><p>Hisoka glanced back at him from the corner of an eye. “Maybe I will keep you all forever, like toys. Refuse to let you leave again. A mortal amusement to occupy me in these dreary times, until you break.”</p><p>“Please don’t do that either,” Gon said, “we all have a lot of things we need to do elsewhere, and we really don’t have time to be prisoners.”</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>Hisoka’s sharp fingers rapped against the wooden armrest. Gon bounced on his toes, trying to be patient, but he hadn’t forgotten that his friends were still out there in the woods, maybe in danger, even now.</p><p>Gon stopped mid-bounce. He came back down to rest on his heels again. “Hey,” he said, “if you let us rest here and go safely, when I'm done in the capital I’ll come back and find you again.”</p><p>Hisoka gave him an inscrutable look. Emboldened, Gon took a step closer to the throne.</p><p>“You said something about toys, so you’re bored, right? You live here alone in the middle of nowhere; I bet you really could use some company!” He gestured at the grand but largely empty chamber. “I can keep you company. Not forever, but for a while! That sounds fair, doesn't it?”</p><p>Hisoka blinked slowly. The tapping fingertips stilled.</p><p>“Aren’t you <em>bold,”</em> the dragon said. The legs swung uncrossed, and then Hisoka sat forward, forearms on knees. “Yes, why not. I will allow you and your friends a night of safe passage through my home, and in exchange, you will return here once you have reunited with your father.”</p><p>“Thank you!” Gon said, and came forward with his hand extended. Hisoka looked down at it, nonplussed.</p><p>“Here, you have to seal a promise,” Gon said, palm open.  “My aunt taught me how. Give me your hand.”</p><p>After a moment, Hisoka lifted one hand and offered it like a queen, the façade of disinterest belied by unblinking eyes.</p><p>Gon folded the fingers into his own so that their thumbs were mirrored. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he chanted, bouncing their joined hands, “and seal it with a! Kiss!”</p><p>The pad of his thumb pressed forward, until it met Hisoka’s. There was a startled jolt from the dragon, and then almost shyly, Hisoka’s thumb pressed back against Gon’s. It was warm—hot, actually, like metal that had been left out under the summer sun. Gon held the kiss for a moment longer, not quite willing to let go. The warmth was nice, he thought. The way Hisoka pressed back was nice, somehow, nice in a way that he didn’t quite understand. He liked the way Hisoka’s eyes fixed on their joined hands. He liked the way Hisoka’s hand clung to his, also not quite willing to let go.</p><p>He didn’t think that coming back here would be such a bad thing.</p><p>Hisoka withdrew his hand. The long, sharp tips of his nails flashed. “It’s agreed, then,” he said. “You will come back to me every winter, and spend the dark season in my sepulcher.”</p><p>“That’s not what we agreed!”</p><p>“Isn’t it?” Hisoka replied. “It isn’t <em>my </em>fault you didn’t ask for specifics before making your promise.”</p><p>Gon stamped his foot.</p><p>“Now now, don’t be sullen,” Hisoka said. He flicked his hand dismissively. “Don’t you have some travelers to rescue…?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gon carried Leorio and the headman back into the dragon mound some hours later, with Kurapika staggering a few feet behind. The headman was almost entirely unconscious, and Leorio was barely hanging in himself, with dried and wet blood all down his back when they peeled away his dark blue doublet. They collapsed in an exhausted tangle on the chamber tile, just inside of the lantern light. Leorio hissed and grunted as Kurapika started to carve the fletching off the arrow with a hunting knife, eventually whittling it down narrow enough that the carpetbag would slide right back up and off it.</p><p>Inside the bag, Gon found Leorio’s gauze and bandaging linens as well as a painkiller wrapped in strips of paper. </p><p>“Your shoulder is in terrible shape,” Kurapika said, some worry slipping into his normally restrained voice.</p><p>“So stop <em>poking</em> at it,” Leorio snarled. He’d buried his face in his hand, only the grimacing edge of his mouth exposed to the room.</p><p>“It needs to go in a sling,” Gon said, “but I don’t have anything make a sling out of.”</p><p>Kurapika sat back, brow furrowed, and then started pulling off his tabard. In a moment’s work, he had wrapped the shoulders of the article around Leorio’s arm, looped it tight through the neck hole, and tied the loose ends tight together around Leorio.</p><p>“There,” he said, surveying his work with a hand still on Leorio’s shoulder. “That will hold for now.”</p><p>“Good job Kurapika!” Gon twisted and called back across the chamber, “Is there somewhere they can lay down, Hisoka?”</p><p>Kurapika looked up, followed Gon’s gaze, and noticed for the first time the man’s shape leaned back ever so casually against a fluted pillar. His arms and ankles were crossed; his loose shirt and pants were in the desert style, immaculately white, as if he had never dirtied them with work. But it was the eyes that made Kurapika’s blood run cold.</p><p>Kurapika leaned in and whispered urgently, “Gon, is that—”</p><p>“A dragon, yes,” Hisoka said, unfolding himself from the pillar. He swayed across the chamber, gesturing lazily to a section of floor as he went—by the eastern wall, where a heavy stone sarcophagus lay open and empty. “You may have that end of the chamber for your needs. Use the coffin if you like. It’s not as if the original occupant is here to complain.”</p><p>“Gon,” Kurapika muttered, “what did you say to that thing? Do we know that we’re safe here?”</p><p>“Don’t worry, Kurapika! We already hashed it out. Hisoka doesn’t mind.”</p><p>Before Kurapika could press further, Gon had already made his way over to the sarcophagus and leaned his whole upper body over the side. “Oh!” he said, “It really is empty! But what happened to the body?”</p><p>“Looted, presumably,” Hisoka purred. “Of course it was already long empty when I arrived. A very lonely little kingdom, you’ll find this place—empty even of the dead.”</p><p>“Not so empty,” Kurapika retorted. “You have brigands encamped only hours to the north.”</p><p>“Ye-es,” Hisoka said, eyes falling to slits, “something was mentioned about that.”</p><p>“Well?” Kurapika demanded, “Are you going to <em>do</em> something about it?”</p><p>“I don’t see how it concerns <em>me,” </em>Hisoka said, touching his chest with a fake little moue of innocence. “Does a man concern himself when frogs have gone to battle with beetles?”</p><p>Kurapika’s hands tightened on the grips of his bokken. He had not expected much of a dragon, even one who currently resembled a man, but to be so <em>careless</em>, so <em>dismissive—</em></p><p>“But they’re on your territory,” Gon pointed out, “and causing problems. The woods must be totally upside-down right now.”</p><p>“I delight in chaos,” Hisoka replied, “and disarray. It’s far too boring when all things are neatly in order. Variety is the spice of life, you know.”</p><p>Gon blinked. “I don’t think that’s what that means,” he said.</p><p>“No?” Hisoka said, mildly.</p><p>Everything about him was strange, like an alien approximation of a human being—his too-pale skin, nonsensical with his loose desert kingdom garb, his bright clothes in colors that Kurapika wouldn’t have believed dye existed for, his hair slicked back in improbable waves. Was this his idea of what a man looked like?</p><p>Hisoka shifted his weight from one arched boot to the other. “Nonetheless, I am feeling a bit…” his yellow eyes flicked left, toward Gon, “…peckish. I suppose I might treat myself to a little snack.”</p><p>He set off, all at once, at a brisk little pace across the tile. As he passed behind one of the carved stone pillars, the cold air filled with a memory of cinnamon, and the serpentine length of a creature unwound itself from nothing, on and on—an impossible length of rippling scale that the single pillar could not possibly have hidden.</p><p>Clawtips clacked against the tile; the crested tail swished softly back and forth. Kurapika stiffened, pulling Leorio against his chest, as Hisoka passed them by.</p><p>At the door to the chamber, Hisoka paused and flicked a wing, filling the cavern with an echoey snap. “What luck, I think, to have company after all,” he said, his long neck twisted to glance over his shoulder. “I think we shall all be <em>excellent</em> friends, don’t you?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Persephone in the Spring</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Oh, has it been that long? Oops. Time just got away...</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry i got distracted at the 11th hour with some meaningless unrelated smut so I'll post that in a day or two as well. <br/>Gon's birthday is in May so this first meeting is just before he turns 15, by the way.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The burial mound was really quiet, with the dragon gone. Gon helped Kurapika lay their friends down on the floor beside the sarcophagus. It seemed sort of disrespectful to use the coffin for any of them, so they had simply folded the carpet bag up under Leorio’s head, and made a pillow for the headman out of his ruined surcoat.</p><p>“I’ve been thinking,” Gon said, as he set the headman down carefully on the tile. “It’s awfully empty in here, isn’t it? I thought dragons were supposed to have hoards full of treasure, with gold piled up to the ceiling!”</p><p>Kurapika gave the chamber a new, harder look. “It <em>is</em> empty…” he murmured. There were the six stone pillars, carved with the bodies of gryphons and bulls holding up the edges of the vaulted ceiling. There was the throne, scored with deep axe marks. The coffin itself, the beautiful stark tile, and nothing else. No great piles of wealth, no enchanted swords, not even gold leaf on the carved walls.</p><p>“Perhaps there’s another chamber,” Kurapika said, dismissing the topic. “Anyway, we wouldn’t dare steal from a dragon, even if he weren’t offering us hospitality. However… <em>suspect</em>… that offer might be.”</p><p>“We wouldn’t?”</p><p>Kurapika shook his head. “Dragons may be evil, but they keep to themselves given the choice. To disturb the hoard of a resting dragon is to unleash terror and destruction on everything in its path. Dragons are relentless hunters. Nothing stays their fury but death.”</p><p>Leorio woke up, then. Fuzzily, still in quite a lot of pain, he walked Kurapika through mixing an antiseptic salve from the vials and powders in his bag, and then let himself be rolled over so that Kurapika could apply the mixture. It smelled strangely of garlic, but Leorio was confident in his directions, and Kurapika had no choice but to trust that Leorio’s hedgewitch medical education wouldn’t fail them now.</p><p>After they’d left him slipping back into restless sleep, fresh gauze pressed to the wound, and finished sharing what remained with the headman, Kurapika swayed back to his feet and wiped his brow. It was cool, under the earth, but his exhaustion and the constant motion left him sweating and tired.</p><p>“You should rest,” Gon said, as perceptive as ever. He was still crouched at Leorio’s side, putting away what remained of the medical supplies. He seemed completely unaffected by any of it, as comfortable and sunny as the first morning they had met. Was it just the energy of youth? But he was only a couple of years younger than Kurapika, and Kurapika was plenty young himself.</p><p>Kurapika shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t feel right sleeping the night here.”</p><p>Gon looked up from the bandage he was rolling. “How come?”</p><p>“This burial mound should have been a sacred place,” Kurapika said. “Maybe the dragon didn’t empty it himself—if we can trust anything a <em>dragon</em> tells us—but he certainly didn’t blink at snapping up the real estate. It’s disrespectful for the living to be here. Unclean.”</p><p>“Huh.”  Gon sat back on his heels, considering this.</p><p>“I won’t sleep,” Kurapika said. He settled down with his back against the sarcophagus, forearms over knees. “You should feel free to rest, if you can. I’ll make sure the dragon doesn’t take any liberties.”</p><p>Gon tilted his head. “What kinds of liberties?”</p><p>Kurapika felt himself go a little hot around the neck. “Er,” he said. “They say—that is, innocence is supposed to be irresistible to beasts and monsters.”</p><p>“Oh, you mean like virgins?”</p><p>“…Yes,” Kurapika said, now definitely red in the face no matter how he tried to keep his expression blank.  “I mean. I assume so.”</p><p>“What do they like about it?” Gon asked. “The innocence, I mean.”</p><p>Kurapika’s gaze slid to the right and fixed firmly on the headless stone relief of a gryphon.  “I wouldn’t know,” he said, stiffly.</p><p>“Hisoka mentioned virgins earlier,” Gon remarked. “It sounds like people use them for hunting dragons. That sounds bad for the virgins.”</p><p>“Yes well. Another good reason not to sleep,” Kurapika muttered.</p><p>Gon did lay down, apparently unperturbed by their conversation. He fell asleep quickly, leaving only Kurapika awake at the early hour where Hisoka finally returned to the tomb, looking sleek and satisfied.</p><p>“Had a nice dinner?” Kurapika asked him, bitter despite the fact that it had been his own idea. It was hard to look at a man-eating creature covered in the blood of his kill and not think of all the men he must have killed before today, good and evil both. Kurapika doubted that the beast cared whether the fare he consumed was guilty or not.</p><p>“Quite satisfactory, thank you,” Hisoka said. He circled the chamber on heavy claws and settled down, wicked talons crossed neatly in front of it on the harlequin tile.</p><p>Kurapika narrowed his eyes at the over-familiar gesture, but Hisoka paid him no mind. He started to lick the blood from his feather-edged claws, enormous tongue as delicate as a cat’s and as uncannily long as a toad’s.</p><p>“What did Gon promise you?” Kurapika asked, unable to quite the grinding suspicion that had entered his head hours before. “In exchange for our sanctuary here?”</p><p>Hisoka paused for a moment, tongue red and wet between his raptor’s talons. “My my, you are a suspicious one, aren’t you?”</p><p>“I have a right to be,” Kurapika grit out. “Your kind are famously gluttonous.”</p><p>“And after I’ve been nothing but a gracious host to you,” the dragon said, with a wounded pouting tone. His lids fell heavy over his slitted pupils. “Such <em>hostility.”</em></p><p>“If you made a deal for his body,” Kurapika said, in a harsh whisper, “I will not allow you to collect upon it. You will have to go through me.”</p><p>“I rather think that’s a matter between Gon and I,” Hisoka said lazily. “Certainly nothing that would concern <em>you,</em> pious traveler. Don’t you have enough secrets of your <em>own</em> to manage?”</p><p>Kurapika tensed.</p><p>“Yes, I can smell that,” Hisoka said. “Really, it’s no special talent, it’s simply that a dragon’s nose is never fooled. Your tabard there hides a multitude of sins, but it doesn’t stop the scent.”</p><p>“If you—”</p><p>“Tell?" Hisoka finished. "My dear guest, who would I tell? I’m sure that our mutual friend Gon is already well aware. And as for the young man at your feet, well, he’ll figure it out sooner or later, if he hasn’t already. Whether or not you are really a boy is of little concern to <em>me.”</em></p><p>“I <em>am</em> a boy,” Kurapika said, low and harsh. He didn’t need some unholy monster to tell him what he was or wasn’t. He’d made his own choices—no one could tell him what he was or wasn’t now.</p><p>Hisoka tilted his serpentine head. Absurdly, for a second Kurapika was reminded of Gon.</p><p>“Just as you say,” Hisoka agreed, after a moment, and then went back to very casually licking dark sticky blood from the scales of his talons.</p><p>The night passed quietly into morning, and Kurapika did not sleep, but his heart did settle into a strange waiting calm.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Gon roused some time after dawn, he thought, although there was no telling down here below the earth. Kurapika was nodding, chin dipping every few seconds as if he was on the edge of sleep, so Gon got up quietly and padded to the far wall, where Hisoka was curled up in a shimmering wall of frothy pink scales.</p><p>One yellow eye cracked open, as Gon stopped politely a few feet in front of him.</p><p>“I’m going out to get breakfast,” he said, quietly, “would you like anything from the forest?”</p><p>“What a good boy you are.” The yellow eye opened a fraction more, and then fell closed. “Don’t trouble yourself,” Hisoka purred, after a moment. “I’m quite full.”</p><p>“Alright,” Gon said, “if you’re sure.”</p><p>Gon made a morning of it, in the wet grass and the blue dawn, digging up mushrooms and birds eggs and the roots of savory tubers until he had enough to feed all his friends. Some ways into the process, he came across the mule who had escaped during the raid. It was in a bad mood, confused, and it took some work for Gon to coax it back to the burial mound, but he did eventually manage it. After tying off the dragging lead line outside the tomb, Gon went back under ground and proceeded to make his friends all something hearty and filling for the long trek ahead.</p><p>The three of them had already been walking most of the road before the ambush, none of them with animals or wagons, but the headman was used to having a merchant’s cart to ride in for short periods, and it would be a long walk with him already recovering from an injury.</p><p>By the time they were ready to leave, Leorio secured into his sling and slightly dazed on painkillers, Gon found his attention circling back to their enigmatic host. While the others were busy, he approached the cat-curled dragon with a respectful little bow.</p><p>The dragon’s wings shifted just a little, with a sound like paper being moved.</p><p>“Thank you again for your hospitality,” Gon said. “And for clearing the path for us.”</p><p>The dragon hummed, an enormously deep sound in his long throat. “Just don’t forget our arrangement,” he said, “the wheel of the seasons has spikes… carefully you don’t get caught beneath it.”</p><p>“Have you been to the capital?” Gon asked.</p><p>“Once or twice,” Hisoka said, lazily. “Before the mad emperor took the throne.”</p><p>“Oh,” Gon said. “You’re really old aren’t you? That was almost a hundred years ago.”</p><p>“Was it?” Hisoka said. “Oh well. One king is rather like another, I’ve found. Quite dull, for the most part, men of politics. Men of action are much more my… taste.”</p><p>The great eye snapped open. In the darkness of that slitted pupil, Gon saw the alien hunger of the cat to the mouse, the pitiless and unblinking intent, felt it like the scrape of a claw up his spine. The air itself seemed to change, to grow wintry, more electric. A little tremor of cold went up the back of Gon’s neck, despite himself.</p><p>There was something about being fixed with that golden stare, the low timbre of that voice purring, that made it impossible to ignore how deadly and powerful Hisoka was—how comparatively small and powerless Gon was, no matter how well he might be doing for a human teenager.</p><p>It left his heart pounding, his head dizzy, even as he backed away and went to rejoin the others. His fingers trembled as he packed up their meager things.</p><p>“Here, Gon,” Kurapika called, “help me get Leorio.”</p><p>Together, with only a little whining, they got both their injured companions upright.</p><p>“Thanks,” Kurapika said, when they had balanced everyone enough to step back for a moment, and then with a tense expression, he added: “Look. I have something I should probably tell you. Now isn’t the time for us to be keeping things from each other, I think.”</p><p>“You do?”</p><p>“Yes. But not here.”</p><p>“Sure, Kurapika,” Gon said, “whenever you’re ready!”</p><p>In very little time, their party was ready to be on its way. Gon glanced back once, over his shoulder, as they entered the treeline. The mound, green and tall beneath the gloomy white sky, was a forgotten thing buried in wilderness. How interesting, how sad—how lonely, the eternal monument of an emperor no one even knew the name of anymore.</p><p>Gon turned away, and thought no more about the tomb or its living master for a long time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The great arena lay open under the autumn sun, the sand rust-stained and wild under foot, and Gon, more beautiful at 16 than he had been at 14 when he first arrived at the capital. Since then summer had passed, and the winter, and summer again, while Gon and his friends puzzled out the grand and sometimes unlovely heart of the empire. A second October was now rolling in, along with the rain, and the festival of the season was in full swing with bright banners and wild splatters of paint waiting to be washed away.</p><p>The amphitheater was full up to the brim despite the dark clouds just over the horizon, casting everything within its enclosure in a strange clear brightness—</p><p>The crowd of the arena screamed, stomping their feet with delight, as Gon stepped into the ring. He was quite apparently a crowd favorite, from the look of the place—Hisoka watched from the shadows, beneath the challenger’s doorway, as the iron gate drew up before him.</p><p>It was certainly not Hisoka’s first time in the capital of the Seaside Empire, although traveling through human cities was always a bit <em>restrictive.</em> They’d changed emperors at some point since the last time—the coins looked different—and it <em>was</em> his first time visiting during the autumn festival. Saffron yellow paint strewn on doors in wild arcs, the smell of spices in the cool damp air. It never rained nor snowed on the capital city when winter came; urns and jugs lay out over the rooftops of the city, ready to catch the last falling water of the season.</p><p>During the festival, every year, there was a tournament. Among all the other kinds of competitions the city hosted during this time, the tournament was perhaps the most famous. Anyone could enter, from the poorest to the richest, male and female, human and inhuman. Last night, contestants drinking cheerfully in the tavern near the amphitheater had loudly announced that they would be the ones to take home the mysterious prize this year. Every previous winner had been sworn to secrecy; anyone who shared the nature of their winnings was supposed to forfeit their life on the spot.</p><p>In his traveling cloak, barely a slit of eyes shadowed by gold-edged linen, Hisoka had listened and observed.</p><p><em>I heard,</em> the drunken swordsman announced, <em>this year it’s some kind of reliquary, like the eye of a saint or something. Well I don’t care what the prize is, me, I just want to win. The winner can ask the emperor for anything he wants, and I’m gonna ask for that bastard Monsue’s head on a platter.</em></p><p>The iron gate rose, casting Hisoka and the tunnel in a checkerboard of light and shadow. He stepped out onto the field.</p><p>Gon, his stance loose and waiting, drew up in surprise at the sight of a contestant he did not recognize. No doubt he had already met Kastro, the competitor he was meant to face down for the final slot. And although Hisoka was mantled in white too, Gon was too clever not to notice that the figure within the robes had changed. In fact—</p><p>“You’re not the one I was supposed to fight,” Gon said, more curious than perturbed. “This is the last round before the final match, you shouldn’t be…”</p><p>Hisoka unpinned the traveling cloak at his shoulder and cast it off, leaving it discarded in the sand. He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing back the coppery locks, and settled his weight smoothly on one hip. There was a renewed ruckus from the stands above them, consternation and delight as the citizens of the empire realized what had happened, and tried to work out who this mysterious last minute challenger was.</p><p><em>“Hisoka?”</em> Gon said.</p><p>“Oh,” Hisoka said, examining his nails, “so you <em>do</em> remember me. I had wondered.”</p><p>Gon stared at him, and then immediately went sheepish, folding into himself in embarrassment. “Right,” he said, “the... winter… thing.”</p><p>“Yes,” Hisoka said. He allowed a dangerous edge to seep into his voice. “The winter <em>thing.”</em></p><p>A red flag flashed at the edge of the ring. Gon dropped his stance entirely. The master of ceremonies was investigating the development; an assistant climbed over the bottom edge of the stands and raced over to the tunnel from which Hisoka had come.</p><p>“You are either very forgetful or very selfish,” Hisoka remarked. He flexed his fingers, watching the sunlight on their polished sheen. “Which one would you like to admit to, I wonder?”</p><p>From the edge of the arena, in a surprisingly cutting voice, someone called: “Gon! Who is <em>that?”</em></p><p>Hisoka shot them a sidelong glance. Ah. So that was what Leorio sounded like. He certainly looked better than the last time he’d been in Hisoka’s presence.</p><p>Gon twisted back. “That’s Hisoka! You know, from the tomb?”</p><p>Leorio’s jaw dropped. Hisoka smirked to himself, as chatter bloomed up the side of the arena.</p><p>Gon turned back to him. “You’re not a competitor, though,” he said, “you can’t fight here.”</p><p>“On the contrary,” Hisoka replied, “you’ll find that <em>anyone</em> can compete in this tournament. I have defeated one of the finalists…” he delicately indicated the tunnel behind him, in which the half-illuminated body of a very dead human being could just be seen. “…Therefore, I am entirely within my rights.”</p><p>Kastro, second time tournament finalist, might have been an amusing plaything in a world where Hisoka had not already fixed his sights upon Gon. Poor luck to him, he had fought back with some modicum of talent. Poor luck to the men last night who had been so confidently betting upon him.</p><p>“But you’ll have to fight me now,” Gon pointed out. “Do you want to <em>fight</em> me?”</p><p>“Oh yes,” Hisoka purred, “I certainly do.”</p><p>The master of ceremonies, from his box at the ringside, threw up a purple flag as his winded assistant ceased whispering in his ear. He stood, a hand up for silence, and the arena reluctantly quieted.</p><p>“The tournament will continue!” he shouted, “This round: Gon Freecs versus Hisoka of the Tombs!”</p><p>The air rumbled with shouts and sighs, money changing hands, vain appeals to the judges down below. Hisoka reached back and stripped the shoe from his left foot, then his right, discarding them in the sand also like so much chaff. Gon watched him, wary, perhaps considering the implications of his new opponent.</p><p>“Well,” Hisoka said, stretching his arms above his head with a luxurious long pull, “why don’t you show me what you’ve learned in your absence, my intended?”</p><p>The sky was bright, and black, and full of wild northern wind. The sand of the arena came alive under their feet, kicked up high and catching the sunlight in plumes. Gon rushed forward—Hisoka spun on the ball of one foot, bare in the sand, and swept around to deliver a kick to the unprotected spine. His blow skimmed the boy’s shoulder, as Gon scrambled just in time to duck.</p><p>They danced over the blood and the footprints of competitors before them. Fighting on two legs was something Hisoka only did rarely, and he enjoyed the stretch of it, the novelty of the challenge. It was a bit of a handicap, but it certainly allowed Gon the chance to shine.</p><p>Sweatdrops caught in the sunlight. </p><p>“You must have been working very hard,” Hisoka remarked, between dodges, “to have made it so far in such a contest, at such a young age.  Is that what you’ve been doing while you were away from me?”</p><p>Gon skidded on all fours over the sand, the momentum of a missed punch carrying him despite his nails dragging at the blood-flecked grains. “Hang on,” he said, his brow wrinkled, “I’m concentrating.” </p><p>Despite himself, Hisoka let out a laugh. "Very well," he said, then he spread his feet on the arena floor, coiled himself, and sprung. Gon’s eyes blew wide with fear. He scrambled back, low to the ground, barely evading Hisoka long enough to pull himself upright. Sand billowed on the wind where Hisoka’s heel broke deep into the ground. When they parted again, Gon’s fingers were shaking. </p><p>Then it was as if you could <em>see</em> his mind clearing. Everything fell away—all arrogance, all hope, all worry. He <em>was</em> magnificent, raw and fearless, clever and reckless as he came for every hint of an opening Hisoka left him. After the first sucker punch Gon was lured into, he stopped taking everything he saw at face value, and drew back, wiping blood from his cut mouth.</p><p>The blows came in a relentless barrage; ribcage aching with the one that landed, Hisoka staggered back, and then he, too, let all else but Gon fall away, raw and golden in an afternoon heavy with unspilt rain.</p><p>When at last Hisoka stood with the weight of his foot on Gon’s chest, pinning the boy to the sand, the master of ceremonies waved another of his quaint colored flags and called for an end to the match. Gon panted, hands clutching the pale flesh of Hisoka’s ankle, as his ribcage creaked warningly under the immovable weight. There was sweat on his forehead, glittering at his hairline, and a bruise blooming on his cheek. He was beautiful, like a comet crashed to earth, scattering trees like stars in the night.</p><p>Of course he never really had a chance. He was only a human, after all, an unarmed human on terrain where pre-planning was impossible. In terms of physical strength, there could be no doubt that Hisoka was in a class all of his own. And yet, the moment that Gon had sacrificed his own arm just to land that one, powerful blow—</p><p>The weight of Gon’s fist still ached, hot and strong, in the flesh above Hisoka’s heart.</p><p>“Damn it,” Gon wheezed, and spit out sand. “I <em>promised</em> Kurapika I’d win for him…”</p><p>Hisoka lowered his lids. “An arrogant promise to make.”</p><p>Gon did not seem to take offense at this. He just stared up at Hisoka, brow furrowed, with his inscrutable amber eyes. And then he broke into a grin.</p><p>“Since you made me break my promise, <em>you</em> can win for Kurapika.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“You can fight the champion, and then when you win, you can give the Kurta eyes to Kurapika, and then everyone will have what they want!”</p><p>Hisoka drew back, letting Gon roll free of the weight of his heel. “Why should I? It wasn’t any fault of <em>mine</em> you made promises you can’t keep.”</p><p>“Because you want to do it.” Gon rolled over onto hands and knees in the sand, winced when the arm he’d sacrificed took a portion of his weight, and then looked up. “You liked that. Fighting me. I bet you’d like fighting the other finalist, too.”</p><p>“Hmm.”</p><p>Gon pushed himself up to his knees with the arm that wasn’t already swelling red. “And if you win for Kurapika,” he said, “I’ll go with you.”</p><p>Hisoka made a sharp little noise. “Another empty promise, Gon?”</p><p>“You <em>changed </em>the deal,” Gon said, petulant. “After we already promised! You changed it!”</p><p>“And still, you gave your word,” Hisoka replied. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let you go after all.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Gon said, with a wince. “Sorry, I’m serious, I didn’t mean to be gone so long. But there was so much to do, and my friends needed help, and one thing led to another…”</p><p>Hisoka lifted a brow.</p><p>“I’m not the type to break the same promise twice,” Gon assured him. He pushed himself to his feet, and then stuck out his hand, thumb upright, fingers curled. “We sealed it, remember? I would have come back to you.”</p><p>Hisoka considered him for a long moment: his extended hand, his earnest face.</p><p>“Oh, alright,” Hisoka said, at last. He examined his nails, checking for signs of damage from the battle. “I’m all worked up now, anyway.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The final match was a glorious triumph of blood and screaming flesh; so arrogant, the would-be champion, so self assured even in the very moment before his destruction. Hisoka loved the taste of an arrogant man—the way their eyes widened when it finally dawned on them, the fear, the disbelief. Like the resolution of a harmony, like the light hitting the sea at dawn, their terror transcended into the <em>sublime</em>.</p><p>Hisoka stood, licking blood from his fingertips, as the shaking referee announced him victor.</p><p>It certainly must have been an upset. The crowd seemed to think so, roaring with such a force that it might have shaken thunder from the gathering clouds. </p><p>He turned his eye to Gon, who was leant over the rail of the first row with his heel kicked up behind him, shouting cheers through cupped hands while his friends loiters stiffly behind him, unwilling to give more than an obligatory clap. Hisoka smiled at Gon, pleased with himself, or—perhaps pleased with Gon? He wasn’t certain. The feeling was good, and it belonged to this moment, and so this moment was good. All the rest was simply confetti.</p><p>As the master of ceremonies announced the final verdict—not that he needed bother—Hisoka stepped over the cracked-open skull of his opponent and approached the ringside, drawn to the vibrancy of Gon’s enthusiasm.</p><p>“Well?” he asked, when he was close enough that Gon dropped his hands and pushed himself up on the railing instead. “A good enough show, I hope?”</p><p>“You’re really amazing,” Gon said, without a hint of irony. “Can you teach me how you did that trick with the coin?”</p><p>Hisoka turned his head aside and hid his mouth behind a knuckle. “It’s only a little trifle,” he demurred. </p><p>“Yeah, but you pulled it out through his head!” Gon said. “While he was still alive! And you put it in there without him even realizing you’d done it! Unless-” Gon frowned. “Unless it was already in there? But who walks around with a coin just lodged in their skull?”</p><p>“It certainly is a mystery,” Hisoka replied breezily. </p><p>“Don’t listen to him,” one of Gon’s new little friends pitched in, with a cold scowl on his delicate cat-eyed features. “He had it palmed the whole time. All he did was crack the guy’s skull and pretend to find something inside.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Gon. And then  after a thoughtful second, he said, “well that’s still pretty cool! I mean, I believed it! I’d still like to learn it, if he’ll teach me.”</p><p>The cat-eyed teen scoffed. He had been watching Hisoka <em>very</em> intently, all through the match, wound-tight and barely reacting to the referee’s score. Hisoka <em>did</em> wonder what was going on in his pretty little brain, to make him so very grim.</p><p>Had Gon told his new friend about Hisoka? Did <em>they</em> know about the promise Gon had made? Somehow, looking at Gon’s carefree affect even now, Hisoka suspected not.</p><p>He clapped his hands together, lightly. “Now that that’s all sorted out,” Hisoka remarked, “we’ll be on our way, I think.”</p><p>“Oh. Sure,” Gon said, “but first there’s some stuff I promised I’d help with—oh! And there was another lead on Ging I wanted to follow up on—”</p><p>Hisoka’s hand shot out and caught Gon around the throat, nails biting into the back of his neck. Gon’s eyes went wide. The powerful arm that had surpassed him in the arena now held him in a grip just a little too tight to be anything but a threat.</p><p>“You will come home with me now,” Hisoka said, pleasantly. “Or else we can have another delightful fight, right now, outside of the contest, where there are no referees to call the match while everyone still has all their limbs attached.”</p><p>Gon grabbed at his wrist. Hisoka became gradually aware of all Gon’s friends crowded around, in various stages of drawing their weapons. He smiled.</p><p>“Hey!” Leorio snapped, “Let go of him right now, you overgrown lizard!”</p><p>“Gon,” Kurapika said, his boken poised in each hand, “you don’t have to do <em>anything</em> he tells you to do. We’ll fight with you, just say the word. He may be tough, but we’re nothing to sneeze at either.”</p><p>Hisoka just tilted his head, amused.</p><p>Yes, he was sure that their teamwork had only improved in the last two years. He <em>could</em> have some fun fighting all of them at once; it would be a nice stretch, a challenge, maybe even enough of one to make up for losing track of Gon again for a while—he had no doubt that the first thing they would do if they caught the upper hand would be to spirit Gon away from him, a magician’s trick in curtains and smoke. He would give chase, of course. He was a dragon, after all.</p><p>He turned his attention back on Gon, waiting.</p><p>“No,” Gon said, after a moment. His voice was even. “I’ll go. It’s only fair, I did put him off for a while. I can pick up here where I left off in the spring.”</p><p>Hisoka released him. Gon rocked back on his heels, solid on the ground again, and touched his neck with two fingers.</p><p><em>“If</em> I let you go,” Hisoka remarked. </p><p>Their little audience bristled, but Gon said, quite confidently, “You will.”</p><p>“Hm? What makes you so sure?”</p><p>“Because I want you to,” Gon said. “So I’ll just have to find a way to make sure you do.”</p><p>Hisoka considered this for a moment. A terribly straightforward argument. You had to admire the audacity.</p><p>“If that’s all, then?” he said, and gestured meaningfully to the door he had come in through.</p><p>“But you’ve got a whole prize coming,” Gon pointed out, “and a wish, from the emperor. Don’t you wanna collect?”</p><p>Hisoka shrugged, fingers opening dismissively. “What need have I for an emperor’s wish? There is nothing he could offer me that I want.”</p><p>“But-” Gon started.</p><p>“Send Kurapika in my stead,” Hisoka said, easily, “he can have whatever vengeful wish his heart desires. Same for the prize.”</p><p>Kurapika stiffened, but there was a distinct look of avarice behind his hard brown eyes. Hisoka smirked.</p><p>“Come,” he said, and held out his hand, beckoning Gon away. “Winter is in the wings. I shouldn’t think you’ll enjoy the road when the weather turns.”</p><p>“Gon,” the cat-eyed one said, low and warning.</p><p>“It’s fine, Killua,” Gon said, without looking away from Hisoka’s hand. “Anyway, who else can say they’ve ever done something like this? It’s a once in a lifetime chance to learn more about how dragons live. Maybe it’ll be useful.”</p><p>Gon stepped forward with his shoulders back, determined. Killua's expression only darkened.  Above them, lightning broke open across the dry, heavy sky.</p><p>Only the sand of the arena remained washed in clear autumn sunlight.</p>
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